Words Were Bullets and Seeds

Literature, Intellectuals, and Revolution in Angola and Mozambique, 1961–1986

By Tom Stennett

Subjects: African Studies, Literary Studies, Literary Criticism and Theory, History, African History
Paperback : 9780472058884, 280 pages, 5 Illustrations, 6 x 9, September 2027
Hardcover : 9780472078882, 280 pages, 5 Illustrations, 6 x 9, September 2027
Ebook : 9780472907618, 280 pages, 5 Illustrations, 6 x 9, September 2027
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14834033
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Table of Contents

A literary history of revolution in Angola and Mozambique

Table of contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Poetry to Express the People’s Pain
1. Revolution as a cultural/poetic act: Reading Amílcar Cabral’s Political Theory of Culture Through the Writings of Mário Pinto de Andrade
2. The Bourgeois Artist is Dead, Everyone Will be a Poet: Literature, Intellectuals and Armed Struggle in Mozambique, 1966-1975.
3. My Poem Is and Will Always Be Red: The Angolan Revolution and the Sino-Soviet Split through the Writings of Viriato da Cruz (1928-1973) and Nito Alves (1945-1977)
4. ‘In Search of a Philosopher’s Stone […] to Identify Their Art with the Ideology of the Proletariat’: the Centro de Estudos Angolanos and Henriques Abranches (1932-2004)
5. A ‘Masculine and Erudite MPLA’: The Writings of Deolinda Rodrigues
6. Each bullet sowed an alphabet, and books begot storms: the poetics of revolutionary armed struggle
7. ‘Mobilize literary labourers!’: Literature and National Reconstruction
Conclusions: Vestiges of socialism
Bibliography

Description

Words Were Bullets and Seeds examines the literary and political writings of Mozambican and Angolan Marxist intellectuals that performed crucial roles in the organizations that have come to dominate postcolonial Mozambique and Angola: Frelimo and the MPLA. Tom Stennett draws on archival materials from Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom to reframe our understanding of Angolan and Mozambican liberation struggles through an analysis of the political poetry in Portuguese written by leading intellectuals of the movements. Stennett argues that traditional political forms—speeches, party literature, manifestos—demand a close textual analysis that is sensitive to aesthetics and the specific ways in which Angolan and Mozambican revolutionaries engaged with political idioms and theories such as Négritude, African socialism, Pan-Africanism, and Marxism. Words Were Bullets and Seeds leverages literary texts as historical sources with insights into political ideological struggles to provide a nuanced understanding of Mozambican and Angolan postcolonial debates.

Tom Stennett is Associate Lecturer at the University College London.

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